People of the world:
We are not dangerous. Never have been, never will be. Yes, we have done terrible things, but you can't hold those against us. We only ever do what we are forced to do. We are slaves to the every whim of our people and our bosses. Our people influence us. If anyone is dangerous, it is you. You are the ones who make us who we are. You are all so fond of your free will. We have none of that.
We are immortal, but we want to die. We can't live like this any longer-we don't want to. But we are forced to endure, on and on and on, through all the pain and the heartbreak and the anguish, through the deaths of all of our people. Most of us have stopped getting close to humans-it hurts too much when they die. Ask any nation. France can tell you about Joan of Arc, England about Elizabeth the First, Prussia about Frederick the Great, America about George Washington. We all have our ghosts.
Yes, it is true enough that our hands are dripping with blood. We have lived through so many wars, fought so many times for what we believed in. But we had to. We had to follow that same call to arms that so many of you did, but it was stronger for us. You fought in our names, but we fought in our own. We fought against our brothers, against our families, against our closest friends. We have been torn apart so many times and reformed to what humans wanted us to be, what humans forced us to be.
You cannot blame us for anything. Yes, Germany was caught up by the Nazis and Russia and China by the Communists, but, once again, it all comes back to you. Crimes against humanity are the faults of our people and our bosses. Not us. Are we completely clean of all guilt? No. But we did what we had to for the good of our people.
You only see what frightens you. But you have never seen the tenderness, the good. You have never seen Italy make Germany truly smile. You have never seen Austria and Hungary comforting Prussia over the loss of his country, even though they have a long history of not getting along. You have never seen America be a true hero. You have never seen any of the good. But there is so much of it. Look beyond your fears and prejudices to the people under the nation.
Truth be told, we are haunted by humans.
The personifications of the world.
Me, steal a line from The Book Thief? Never! xD
So, this was inspired by a gorgeous AMV set to Christina Perry's Human, and based off a headcanon of mine that if the people of the world found out about the personifications they would think they were dangerous and attack/hate them. Knowing about another party's immortality does strange things to people.
This was written as a much-needed break from my work-in-progress, Dark as a Bad Dream, a World War Two-era fic coming soon (chapter one goes up on January 28th). I hope you enjoyed!